ON A ROAD TO WHERE: TRANSGRESSION AND AUTEURISM IN THE 1960s ROAD MOVIES

The paper begins with a survey of theoretical approaches to the literary genre that lays the ground for examining the conceptual and thematic diversification of the road movie during the 1960s. An outline of the exemplary characteristics of the film genre in question and its critical assessment follows. In the focus of my analysis are S. Kubrick's adaptation of V. Nabokov's Lolita, A. Penn's Bonnie and Clyde, F. Coppola's identity quest The Rain People, and M. Antonioni's controversial Zabriskie Point. Instead of tales about re-integrating trips and 'coming home', they display dispersive narratives of journeys reaching the point of no return. Each one is a story of transgression and subversion of established values, loss of meaning, and fruitless effort to regain it. All of them are works of outstanding or emerging film auteurs, whose thematic and narrative challenges, as well as visual inventions, maintain the open and undetermined character of the 1960s road movies.